Butterflies and flowers
by forgotten-things
Summary: The world isn't black and white, nor are the people living in it. No matter how evil a person may seem to be, there is still good in them. A look at different Naruto characters faced with different scenarios. Chapter 2: Orochimaru was not evil, just misunderstood, as geniuses often were.
1. Decisions

Disclaimer: I don't own Naruto or any of its characters and I don't want any profit from this.

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A/N : This will be a series of one-shots featuring different characters of Naruto.

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Konan

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She finds the child hidden in the rubble of a half-demolished house, curled up on top of a dead woman. Tear tracks mark the tiny, dirt-streaked face, and even though she is asleep, her body convulses in dry sobs.

It is the only living presence Konan can sense in this rubble of a town, deserted in the aftermath of war. But the child is not her problem. Akatsuki's purpose here has been served, and there is nothing more for her to do except report back to Nagato, and perhaps collect their reward.

Konana turns on her heel and starts to walk down the street. Behind her, she hears the child sniffle again. This time, the sound is accompanied by a softy uttered "mama" and more sounds of scuffling. She is almost at the end of the street when the child starts to wail in earnest, voice hoarse but still loud in the silence of the ruins.

"MAAAAMAAAA… MAAAAAMAAAA."

Against her better judgement, Konan finds herself turning back and retracing her steps until she is once again standing in front of the child who is now sitting up, clawing at the dead woman with her two small hands.

"Mamaaaaaaa," she cries again. Her voice sounds betrayed, broken – and something clenches in Konan's heart. She crouches down and reaches for the child, who finally looks at her with wide, terrified eyes and throws herself back onto her mother's body, anchoring herself to the dead body with both hands and feet.

"MAAAAAAAMAAAAA. NO NO NOOOO. MAAAAMAAAAaaa," the child cries, thrashing her arms and legs wildly in an attempt to fight off Konan, her little body putting up as much of a fight as it can to stay with the person she loves. Konan pulls back, and studies the child. She could not have been more than two.

This isn't her business. A crying infant is not her responsibility. She should never have turned back, should never have given in to the sound of the child's cry. She should have killed the child when she first found it, asleep amongst the rubble.

She should kill it now; end its pain once and for all.

But in the end, she cannot bring herself to kill it—kill _her_. In the end, Konan knocks the child out and bundles her into her arms.

She doesn't go back to the base that night. Instead, she heads in the opposite direction. She passes by two villages before the village she intends to stop at comes to view. She has been here before on reckon missions, and this is a big, cheerful village, important enough to be guarded well, but not valuable enough for someone to want to invade it. It lies well out of the range of conflict, at least for the time being.

She stops at a small stream a few miles away from the village and cleans up the child the best she can, but there is not much she can do about her battered clothes.

Under the blood and grime, the little girl has rosy cheeks and rich black hair that curls around her tiny face. It is, perhaps, a child Konan might have hoped to have when she was but a child with a head full of foolish dreams and hopes. But she no longer held the same ideals as the stupid girl she had been as a child.

She bundles up the child in her plain black cloak and puts a henge over herself before she covers the final few miles to the village.

It is a lively village, especially with festivities going on and people merry making on the streets, and no one pays attention to a poor woman with her infant daughter, so Konan manages to weave in through the crowd unnoticed until she reaches her destination.

The inn is a small one, only two stories high, and unimpressive to look at. The couple who runs it are well into their fifties and they are kind, unassuming sort of people. These people would do.

She leaves the child on the front porch, an origami swan nestled on the bundle with the words 'keep her safe.'

She had spared the child, just as a man had spared her life years ago. As she walks away, Konan hopes that she does not regret her decision, unlike the man, who surely would, if he saw how far she had come from the girl he had rescued.


	2. Genius

.Disclaimer: I don't own Naruto or any of its characters and I don't want any profit from this.

A/N : This will be a series of one-shots featuring different characters of Naruto.

.

Summary: Orochimaru was not evil, just misunderstood, as geniuses often were.

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2

Genius

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Orochimaru was a genius. He was bloody brilliant and he knew it. Sarutobi-sensei knew it. Even Tsunade-hime and that great big goof Jiraiya knew it. But brilliance had its own price.

The fact that he was falsely accused of and chased off from his own village for atrocities he did not commit was proof enough. People liked smart people, yes. But more importantly, they liked smart people who followed their ideologies. Anyone who was different, anyone with ideas that did not fit the social norm—they were labeled as outcasts. And those outcasts who acted on these un-agreeable ideas were hunted down and usually put behind bars, or done away for good. It was the very reason that chased Orochimaru out of his home at a mere young age of thirty-five. It was the same reason he was declared a missing nin and a threat; a serial killer.

They would tell you he was a murderer, an evil, evil man who tortured and then murdered and mutilated children for laughs. But it could not be further from the truth. Orochimaru was a scientist, and like all scientists, he was simply curious.

Orochimaru had always been curious, and he satiated his curiosity with science. He busied himself with finding new and innovative ways to use the human body; new cures for old diseases, new diseases to be used as germ warfare, new innovations and adaptations that would make the human body faster, stronger, more invincible.

Naturally, for his ideas to become a reality, he needed to test them out; needed to experiment. He needed hosts and germs and bodies and all sorts of things one needs to go about being sciency and inventive and yes, he did need a supply of human and animal bodies. Now, the animal bodies were simple and nobody questioned that. He was even encouraged at one point.

The human bodies, however, were tricky. For a town that routinely sent children to war and on suicide missions, it was hypocrisy in its truest form when there was public outrage after finding his lab of human studies, out of which only some had been dead. And he had only been experimenting with abandoned children anyway, to begin with. Most would not have reached adulthood in the deplorable conditions they lived in at the orphanage, which was the main reason he had made these children his samples instead of kidnapping well-fed children with proper homes – who would have made much better specimen, to be honest. And if these children had survived, they would be so much better for it for he had only worked to enhance their power and chakra—for the good of both these children and the village itself.

But did Konoha see that? No.

All everyone saw was a man doing unspeakable things. He had had to abandon most of his research, including the only sign of his success—Anko, the only child to survive the enzymes and hormones he had injected into her in hopes of creating something more powerful within her.

Exiled and alone, Orochimaru refused to give up. He took refuge in the Akatsuki for a time, completing missions for them in exchange for money and other necessities he needed to set up a proper base. Konoha labeled him a traitor, for Akatsuki was most vile an organization. But Orochimaru didn't see much difference between his village and his new organization. It was all politics, really, and they were all hired hands. Both Akatsuki and Konoha did the dirty work of the highest bidder, and Orochimaru had done enough assassination missions with both to know that the only difference was that Akatsuki had yet to turn on its own; Konoha already had, as they proved with the massacre of the Uchiha clan some years after he left the village.

Orochimaru was no fool to believe the stories they spread. Uchiha Itachi joined the organization yes, but he did not once believe that a mere child could kill no less than a hundred people in one night and then escape a village full of fully-armed, fully capable ninja. No, this was political, and Konoha had, once again, proved just how much of a hypocrite it was.

He did not mourn the loss of another family of ninja who was as bad as the next, but he did mourn the almost-loss of a bloodline as precious and as full of promise as the Sharingan. He still had Itachi though, and that little brother who was still alive. He could yet think of something.

He left Akatsuki a couple of years after and set up his own base of operations in the middle of village he named the hidden village of sound; his very own little ninja village where he could practice his precious science as much and as widely as he wished.

In the sound, he could finally flourish.

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